Discovering the reign of God in real life

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This is the reason you have money: that you may put an end to poverty, not that you may turn poverty into a business! Instead, under the guise of offering others help, you make their misfortune greater, and sell human kindness for money. Sell your wares and I won’t prevent you: but trade in the kingdom of heaven! Don’t accept the fat compensation of a one-percent monthly interest for such a virtuous act, but rather the reward of life without end. Why are you so poor, so cheap and petty in your thinking, that you sell great things for a trifle – for money that perishes – when you ought to be selling it for the Kingdom that always lasts? Why do you cast God away to gain human profit?

Jesus makes it abundantly clear that we must never serve money; yet, at the very same time he urges us to “make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon” (Matt. 6:24, Luke 16:9). How are we to break the horns of this strange dilemma? We do so by first conquering the spiritual power money has over us, and once we have conquered it we are free to use it for kingdom purposes. We are never to serve money; but having conquered it we are then able to use money for the common good. Never serving. Ever using.